http://blogs.bankingtech.com Banking Technology Magazine's blog section Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:03:52 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Ah, for the good old days when bankers made money by providing useful services – taking deposits and making loans, for example. Is it too much to expect bankers to make money honestly rather than through hidden fees and “gotcha” programs? Now the New York Times reports a massive effort in ... http://blogs.bankingtech.com/blog/2010/02/26/can-bankers-get-honest-about-their-charges/ Larry Ellison has said that with the acquisition of Sun he is ready to take on IBM in the enterprise. Others don't think so. I’ve been steadily impressed with what IBM is doing in financial services. Everyone talks solutions, and has done for years, but IBM seems to offer the combination of ... http://blogs.bankingtech.com/blog/2010/02/25/for-oracle-to-take-out-ibm-requires-more-than-talk/ Some new research by David De Cremer, a professor at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and visiting professor to the London School of Economics, raises a few interesting questions about bonuses, the main one being – should anyone trust bonus-driven bankers? In his research involving 15 top Dutch banking executives, ... http://blogs.bankingtech.com/blog/2010/02/23/do-bonuses-make-you-untrustworthy/ Reinforcing some of the statements in my piece on customer retention in the current issue of  Banking Technology, is this amusing comment from Stan Demarest, SVP of segment management at Hibernia National Bank: “There was an article that came out probably 15 years ago in one of the banking trade journals, ... http://blogs.bankingtech.com/blog/2010/02/15/banks-shift-focus-from-products-to-customers/ Word has it - from respectable sources - that Michel Barnier, the incoming Internal Markets Commissioner, thinks Stock Exchanges should be part of the national infrastructure. Hmm. In some eyes, an exchange should assist with the creation of an orderly market. You can certainly put a case for MiFID creating a disorderly ... http://blogs.bankingtech.com/blog/2009/12/10/is-barnier-the-anti-mccreevy/ In Financial Speculation, Gerald Ashley has some advice for investors. But he doesn’t really expect them to take it. With 30 years experience in finance, including Baring Brothers in London and Hong Kong and the Bank for International Settlements, he knows his way around the markets. Despite the changes in technology – ... http://blogs.bankingtech.com/blog/2009/12/09/268/ Nice comment from criminologist and broadcaster Professor Laurie Taylor on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme this morning: "If you steal someone's savings or pension you're more likely to end up with a yacht than a jail sentence." He'll be expounding on this in a full Thinking Allowed programme this afternoon, and ... http://blogs.bankingtech.com/blog/2009/11/04/white-collar-crime/ The announcement that the London Stock Exchange is in talks to buy Turquoise signals the death of the Bourse. Tied to the Exchange's departure from the Federation of European Exchanges, it suggests a seismic shift in strategy. FESE has been campaigning for a level playing field of regulation to be run ... http://blogs.bankingtech.com/blog/2009/10/01/death-of-the-bourse/ I am preparing a story for the Sibos issue of Banking Technology, and if there is a discernible trend it is that experts think Asia will come out of the financial crisis before Europe and North America. And along the way, Asian banks and multinationals have acquired some attitude. Two different ... http://blogs.bankingtech.com/blog/2009/09/01/asian-banking-set-for-an-economic-rebound/ Uh oh – FT columnist Gillian Tett is quoting a French sociologist ... This sort of thing could get dangerous, but it looks intriguing. Drawing on her time in Japan, which prompted me to pull her book about the experience off the shelf, she reminds readers that westerners were constantly telling ... http://blogs.bankingtech.com/blog/2009/08/28/power-elites-and-banking-reform/